5 of the Most Underappreciated Horror Icons

5 Of the Most Underappreciated Horror Icons

By: Brian Cotnoir

     It’s October, that magical time of year.  The leaves are changing colors, the air is ripe with the smell of pumpkin spice and apple cider donuts, and everyone is so excited to start binge watching their favorite horror film and dress up as their favorite horror movie icons for Halloween.  Yes, pretty soon the streets will be crawling with people dressed as everyone from cult icons Freddy Kreuger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers to the more modern day Mr. Babadook and Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and it got me thinking: why are these characters considered so iconic, but others are relegated to obscurity and cult underground status?  What makes a Horror character so Iconic?  Is it the number of films they appear in?  Is it the number of people the kill?  Is it how they kill?  Or is it just a pure nostalgia factor?  Well for whatever reasons they may be, every year it seems we give credit to the same Horror Icons, and leave others hung out to dry, so today, I’m here to tell you who I think are 5 of the Most Underappreciated Horror Icons, and why I think you should watch their movies this Halloween instead of the clichéd classics.

1.) Daniel Robitaille a.k.a. Candyman from Candyman

This film that is very loosely based off the short story “The Forbidden” by another Horror legend, Clive Barker.  The story follows a Grad Student named Helen who is doing a thesis on Urban Legends and one of those legends in particular—the legend of the Candyman—has her very interested.  According to the legend, the Candyman was a slave named Daniel Robitaille who fell in love with a white woman and once their love was discovered he was chased out of town, had one of his hands cut off and replaced with a rusty hook, and then was covered in honey and stung by like a thousand bees, and then to top off this worst day ever they lynched him too.  So apparently, if you look in a mirror and say Candyman 5 times and then shut off the lights and turn them on again real quick (I may be messing up that whole origin story), Candyman will appear and gut you from groin to gullet.           Candyman is definitely a villain who has a lot going on: part scary man with the hook for a hand, part Bloody Mary, and part made of bees!...I don’t know if the rest of you are afraid of bees, but I am so that makes him way scarier.  I will say that the films sequel “Candyman 2: A Farewell to Flesh” gave him a more stable background story than the original film, but nonetheless he still intimidating.  Played by Actor Tony Todd with his deep voice and swarm of lethal bees, definitely gives off an ominous presence.  The first time we actually see the Candyman is in a parking garage in the middle of the day.  This is one of the few times I can recall a Horror movie character being revealed in the daytime rather than at night.

2.) Pumpkinhead from the Pumpkinhead films

Yeah, I know so many people just think he’s a knock-off of H.R. Geiger’s Xenomorph creation from Ridley Scott’s “Alien”.  Who cares?  It’s awesome!  Not only was the creature created by Special Effects Genius Stan Winston, but Winston also directed the film as well! Pumpkinhead is great movie monster.  He’s a creature who gets resurrected by a witch for people who want vengeance against people who have wronged them.  Another thing that I think is cool about Pumpkinhead is he doesn’t just get resurrected and then goes on the killing spree and then returns to his slumber once it’s all done.  If you call for Pumpkinheads help he’s going to make sure you experience and witness the killings (telepathically at least).  That way you know the deed has been done almost like a Hellaraiser and E.T. hybrid.

3.) The Entity’s from It Follows

So this film has only been out for around 2 years so it would make sense why not many people would consider them, but there’s also another valid reason...you can’t actually see them, so yeah, it’s kind of hard to be afraid of something you can’t see. These creatures don’t even have an official name, so I’m just referring to them as The Entities.  So the entities are like the world’s scariest S.T.D.  They follow a person, appearing taking many different forms and they only appear to the person they are trying to kill, and the only apparent way to make them leave you alone (temporarily) is to have sex with another person, and then they will be in pursuit of that person until they are killed and then it gets passed on back to the person who gave it to them.  I may have done a terrible job trying to explain them, but yeah, it’s still pretty scary.  How do you fight against something that only you can see and can take the form of anything around you?  It could be your best friend, a random stranger, an animal, or some other bizarre creature.  How do you know what’s real and what isn’t.  The constant fear and paranoia is enough to want to drive a person to contemplate suicide.

4.) S. Quentin Quale a.k.a. Dr. Satan from The House of 1000 Corpses

So the plot of Rob Zombie’s cinematic debut starts off with group of young friends trying to find the spot where a group of locals in the town of Ruggsville, Texas hung Mr. S. Quentin Quale, or as he’s known in those parts Dr. Satan.  Quale was trying to create a Super-Race of Humans out of mentally ill patients at the Willows County Mental Hospital, and well we don’t actually get to see Dr. Satan till almost the very end of the film.  When we do see him, he’s even more terrifying than we ever could’ve imagined.  The reason I think people forget about Dr. Satan is because of his lack of screen time, and the horrible things he does are pretty mundane compared to the acts of violence enacted by the Firefly family, who own the land where Dr. Satan enacts his experiments in an underground catacomb.

5.) Jame Gumb a.k.a. Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs

Did you know that Hannibal Lecter isn’t the main villain in the 1991 Award Winning Horror classic “Silence of the Lambs”?  Because a lot of people seemed to be confused about that.  Hannibal isn’t the one Agent Starling is pursuing; he’s already incarcerated when she first meets him, she actually goes to see him to get advice on how to catch the films real villain, Buffalo Bill. Lecter is in the film for less than 20 minutes, yet he is the one most remembered from this film, and not the psychotic transgender serial killer who likes to wear suits made out of women’s skins and pretend he’s a lady.  To me Buffalo Bill is way more terrifying than Hannibal.  Think about it, to be eaten by a cannibal, you have to already be dead.  You’d put up one hell of a fight if someone was trying to eat you, so your death would be quick and (probably) painless so the cannibal can get their munch on.  However, Buffalo Bill needs to keep his victims alive for weeks, tormenting them and torturing them psychologically and emotionally, and in the end he’s going to take their skin.  Yeah, I would say that Buffalo Bill is way scarier.  Plus I feel bad for the actor who played him, Ted Levine.  It seems like everyone in this film got an Academy Award, but him.  He wasn’t even nominated for Best Supporting Actor.  I think Mr. Levine got cheated.